Seven weeks ago she had returned with Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome to the United States. Mrs. Jerome had resumed training her as soon as the Statue of Liberty was sighted. Thus, the good lady reminded her that they had come from England (where plenty of explosive insurrectionary material was lying around) to their own land with its "tendency to normalcy" as a noted politician expressed it. That is, they had come back to the America of the women’s vote, the high cost of living, the housing shortage, the unemployment menace, the deportation of radicals and Japanese, the reception of hoards of unhealthy South-European immigrants, the ouija board, the stock market slump and jazz. The same old America! It was reading "Main Street" just then; and Mrs. Jerome opined that all America was reading the book, _not_ because it gave a memorable picture of the soul of a nation in all its drab, desolating mediocrity, but because it gratified the furious national craving to be paid attention to and talked about, it mattered nothing whether in terms of praise, disparagement or abuse. Mrs. Jerome’s gloomy view rolled off Janet like water off a duck’s back. She had youth, enthusiasm, vigor; there was a great civilizing work to be done. And though, as Mark Pryor took pains to assure her, it might take a thousand years to do it, she threw herself into it heart and soul, just as if the goal were attainable next year. Two weeks after their arrival in New York, the Susan B. Anthony House had been opened, undemonstratively but successfully. Mrs. R. H. L. Jerome, an omnipresent deity at first, relinquished the reins of government gradually; all the reins save one, for it was well understood that she was to be the power behind the scenes. Within a week, every suite in the house was occupied and hundreds of applicants were turned away. The rents, though far from low, were not unreasonable; and, as special provision had been made for the care of children, and competent experts placed in control of each department ("quality not quantity" was the specific motto throughout), the house was a godsend for precisely the ones it was designed to serve, that is, for self-supporting professional women with one or two children. For a time, things had gone swimmingly. Almost too swimmingly. As the news spread, social workers and social science students began to pay the place a visit. Before long the unofficial busybodies followed and, with the kindliest intentions in the world, did their level best to disorganize the machinery of the house and subvert the discipline.